Is France Willing to Work?
George F. Will - Is France Willing to Work? - washingtonpost.com
The cultural contradictions of welfare states are comparable. Such states presuppose economic dynamism sufficient to generate investments, job creation, corporate profits and individuals' incomes from which comes tax revenue needed to fund entitlements.But welfare states produce in citizens an entitlement mentality and a low pain threshold. That mentality inflames appetites for more entitlements, broadly construed to include all government benefits and protections that contribute to welfare understood as material well-being, enhanced security and enlarged leisure.
The low pain threshold causes a ruinous flinch from the rigors, insecurities, uncertainties and dislocations inherent in the creative destruction of dynamic capitalism. The flinch takes the form of protectionism, regulations and other government-imposed inefficiencies that impede the economic growth that the welfare state requires.
So welfare states are, paradoxically, both enervating and energizing -- and infantilizing. They are enervating because they foster dependency; they are energizing because they aggravate an aggressive (think of burning Peugeots) sense of entitlement; they are infantilizing because it is infantile to will an end without willing the means to that end, and people who desire welfare states increasingly desire relief from the rigors necessary to finance them.
George Will on the problems faced by by Sarkozy as he seeks to restore France's economic strength. He's got a tough challenge ahead of him given that the culture of dependency seems to be ingrained in the French psyche now. But it's a battle that needs to be fought, and won, if France is to remain a stable nation.
I also was intrigued at this point:
Arson is a form of commentary favored by the French left...
If a similar form of protest ever takes hold here, how long until the ACLU and others of their ilk defend it as a freedom of expression?